Taco Bell ad campaign asks Alabama law firm to apologize

View full sizeTaco Bell's ad as it appeared in The Birmingham News on Wednesday, April 20, 2011. (Screen capture image)

Taco Bell Corp. today launched a national advertising campaign asking an Alabama law firm to apologize for falsely claiming its taco filling doesn't include enough meat to be called "beef."

In full-page ads running in The Birmingham News and in national newspapers including The New York Times, the Irvine, Calif.-based taco chain asks the Beasley Allen law firm, "Would it kill you to say you're sorry?"

The Montgomery firm recently withdrew a lawsuit it filed that argued Taco Bell's taco filling was mostly filler, and couldn't be called "beef" under federal standards.

Taco Bell and Beasley Allen this week issued conflicting statements about the resolution of the suit. Beasley Allen claimed Taco Bell agreed to change its marketing because of the suit. Taco Bell says it's changed nothing and the suit's claims were false.

Taco Bell has "not changed products, ingredients or advertising despite what the Beasley Allen law firm has claimed," the company said in a prepared statement released this morning.

Efforts to reach a spokesman for the law firm today were not immediately successful.

In addition to newspaper ads, Taco Bell waged its war on the Montgomery, Alabama, based law firm through social media sites such as Facebook, its corporate website, search engines and the video posting site YouTube.